Drawing in Red
by Vema
Summary: One of the many sprite-Mebabyte fics that are soon to be coming, I'm sure. Has an odd Hannibal Lecter feel to it, I am told, though I wouldn't know personally.


_Author's note: This fic is in present tense?! What am I thinking!? Ah well. This is set after "the hunt", as I decided to ignore it for the moment. Enjoy._

Drawing in Red 

by: Vema 

The hallways are dark around me as I walk, darker than I expect. I've only ever visited the levels that are for normal prisoners; burglars, embezzlers, one-time murderers who have turned themselves in or else been convicted of manslaughter. I've never had a reason to visit the lower levels, or the lowest, where they keep the serial deleters, those that brutally violate their victims before killing them, psychopaths who are incurable and therefore a threat. 

All is dim but for the light streaming into the hallway from their cells, each different and more disturbing. In one, a sprite is painting a picture to the sound of Beethoven's Pastoral, something gruesome that I don't want to stay around to see, and another is completely bare except a chair in the center which holds a sprite who doesn't move at all. I shudder as I pass, feeling her eyes on me. 

I finally stop at the end of the hall, looking to my right. A sprite is drawing on the white walls in red, things I don't recognize, and horrible, unspeakable acts that make my stomach twist painfully. He smiles at me for a moment before going back to what he's doing. 

"Hello, Guardian." 

Turning towards the familiar voice, I find him. 

"Ernie is his name. An interesting neighbor, if I am to judge by the others down the hall, although Howard certainly does have nice taste in music." He uncrosses his legs and stands, striding gracefully over to me as the soft, yellow light of the room reflects off of his dark blue skin. His hair is slicked back from his face wetly, one lock curling around his ear, and his eyes are crinkling at the corners in amusement, his smile somehow still familiar even now. 

"Megabyte." I smile too, sincerely, as I am glad to see him in a more civil mood. When we had first converted him to a sprite, he was less than cooperative… 

_"You can't do this," he had said. He'd struggled against his restraints desperately. _

"It's all right, it won't be all that bad. And when it's over you won't need to infect anymore. You'll just be normal." 

It was hard for me to ignore his mortified look, and even harder to ignore it when he'd started pleading with me to let him go. Megabyte. Begging me not to do something. It was laughable, really. 

"I had nearly given up on your promise," Megabyte says, approaching the firewall that separates us. His voice quiets then. "You are the first memorable thing from my past that I've seen in quite a while. Four minutes is a long time down here, you know." 

"I know. I should have come sooner, but Dot… well, she said I should give you time." 

"Ms. Matrix was worried that it would be too much of a shock for me, hm? Why, I'm stunned at her compassion." 

"She's really not as mad as you think…" Even though she is. She's furious. But then, she had been in the room when I'd released him from his restraints. She'd seen him curl up into a ball, shaking and sobbing, and when he'd shied from my touch like I was going to burn him. Maybe he had really thought that. Even Dot isn't blind enough from rage that she didn't see how much agony he was in. "I'm glad you're feeling more like your old self again." 

His smile fades, the light in his eyes dimming as his hand twitches slightly. It is a moment before he says anything. "I suppose I'll never really feel like my old self again, Guardian. You saw to that." 

I immediately regret my words. "That's- that's not what-" 

"Yes, I know what you meant." He shakes his head and runs his hands over his clothes before crossing his arms over his chest again. 

"I'm sorry." I look down for a moment and then glance back to see Ernie finishing another picture and shudder. "So…what are you doing with your time in here?" 

"Mostly just planning my escape and my revenge." 

"Oh." We both stare at each other uncomfortably. "So…are you going to invite me in?" 

Green eyes look into mine in disbelief through a haze of orange energy. "Invite you in? Are you serious?" 

"Um. Yes?" 

He continues to unblinkingly hold my gaze for a few moments and then sighs. "Very well. Would you like to come in then?" 

I type a code into the panel on the side of the room and go in as soon as the firewall has opened. It closes again almost the nanosecond I cross its threshold. 

"Quite the bit of luck that you got over, wasn't it? It wouldn't have been very attractive if you'd been caught in the middle when it came back up, although Ernie would have had something to add to his wall." He walks over and sits back down on the chair he had recently been occupying. "I'm afraid they've refused to give me more than one chair, so you'll have to sit on the bed over there." 

I sit on it and marvel. His cell is plush compared to others I have seen, though all are rather well off on this ward. The walls are a dark cream color and lamps sit on two coffee tables that grace it. There is a bookshelf, full, on the wall near his chair. The chair is cushioned and has a dark red color to it, a handle on the side hinting that it reclines. His bed is large and covered with a spread of a deep emerald, and there are several pillows. There are conversation piece books on the coffee tables, and a pad for writing. "Who did you have to kill to get all this?" I ask. 

"The first guard who questioned me when I asked for it." 

I stare at him. 

He shrugs and picks up his discarded book. 

I almost ask if he's kidding, but decide against it. I don't want to know. We sit in silence for a moment and just as he looks up, about to ask why I'm still here I know, I blurt out, "How are you?" 

"How am I?" I find myself expecting his eyes to glow, and they almost seem to. "How am I? Well, I'm feeling a little weak, if you must know." 

"Weak?" I'm worried now. "Are you sick? Maybe we should call a diagnostic program…" 

"No, I am not ill. You see, Guardian, I used to be strong. I used to have power over all those around me. My body used to be steel, tough and impenetrable. Nothing could get past my skin. And now…" He looks down at himself, his eyes softening again in sorrow. "I am nothing. A hollow shell of what I once was, a cheap mockery of my former glory." 

He runs a hand up his arm slowly, touching the skin with a wondering expression on his face. "So very delicate and fragile. Do you know what it's like to feel your body change to this from what I once was? I suppose not. Such overloads of feeling and sensation…" His eyes harden again. "You should have deleted me and been done with it." Silence falls again, coloring the air as he absently rubs his arm. I'm fairly sure than he doesn't even care if I offer him an answer. 

There are a few more beats of awkward silence before I can find my voice. "It was for the best," I say quietly, not even sure I believe it. 

"Perhaps it was for your best." He picks up his book and continues reading, none of the emotions he had just shown evident. "You no longer have to deal with any threat from me and you don't need to worry about the guilt acquired from deleting me. This whole situation cleaned up very nicely for you, didn't it?" 

My face flushes with heat. "That's not true!" 

"Isn't it?" He doesn't even bother to look up as he says that. 

A voice in the back of my mind is quietly murmuring in agreement with him, but I ignore it and him, letting myself simply look angry. 

"Tell me, Bob. How did you know I wouldn't kill you if you came in here? There's not much for me to lose, you see. I'm as low as I can go in the prison right now, so even with your life added to the tally, there isn't a lot they can do to me." 

"I suppose I didn't know." 

"Ah. Probably didn't even think about it, did you?" 

"No, not really." I'm still not worried, although a wiser sprite may have been. 

I hear footsteps approaching. One of the workers is stopping in front of Ernie's cell. "Come on, Ernie." He hits and button and slides what looks like a roll of white paper underneath the firewall, as well as a container of something and a roller. Ernie picks it up as soon as he's finished his latest masterpiece and begins to roll the liquid onto the wall. 

"What's he doing?" I ask quietly. 

"Merely creating another canvas, of course." He's looking up now. "He recovers it and starts over every day, creating layer after layer of the same images on his wall. If you were to peel away that paper, there'd be the same thing underneath each part of it as there is on top, as if he's reliving each memory and emotion over and over again and it's driving him random." As he speaks, the first strip of white is on the wall, pure, clean, perfectly perpendicular to the floor. "Soon all those layers will pile up and he won't be able to escape, the fool." 

"Don't you have any compassion?" 

"For him? I don't suppose you know what he did, or neither would you. I've never done anything so atrocious." He quietly places his fingers over his mouth, thinking. "Isn't it odd that you refuse to kill sprites no matter what they have done, and yet you'll kill viruses on a whim? It seems that viruses have more of an excuse for their behavior, and yet they are systematically wiped out, whether they've done anything worthy of deletion or not. Sprites who go bad can't blame their programming; they simply enjoy whatever it is they have done." 

My stomach lurches suddenly upward, and I feel stifled and dizzy. "I have to go." 

"So soon?" 

The code is quickly punched into the door and I exit. The firewall is separating us again. "It was nice to see you, Megabyte." 

"And you as well, Guardian. I suppose you'll be coming back soon…?" 

"Next minute, and every minute after that." There's an odd look in his eyes, something I've never seen there before, and I feel my heart tighten. "Just like you asked." 

A wince crosses his face and the expression is gone as quickly as it appeared. "Very well. Good bye." 

As I leave, Megabyte is still reading his book, and Ernie keeps on papering his wall. I wonder how much time it will take for my layers to smother me. 

~end 


End file.
